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“We need to do some things. This is a starting point for the summer, not an ending point. But it’s an important day and our focus has been let’s see if we can improve our team yesterday and today at the draft. Now we have to go to the next day.”

Here is an edited transcript of what Burke said on Saturday:

On keeping picks
Well, we didn’t have a third or a fourth, so it’s not like I can throw a rock at people. But I think for the long term it’s pretty hard to build a competitive organization without using your picks.

On adding to an already-deep blue line
It’s going to sound like a broken record to people watching this but you take the best available player, you take the best available athlete. You do some positional adjustment to reflect the difficulty of the positions, so you might have goaltenders a little higher than you would otherwise, you might have D a little higher than you would otherwise, but if you pass on a player thinking that we you a winger more and you pass on a good defenceman or a good centre that can bite you right in the butt.

We debated a positional pick this year and decided not to do it, so we get to the second round and we have a defenceman that we had rated at 22 and we took him. And this is a guy we’re excited about, this is a guy we really like.

On trading Jonas Gustavsson
First off, I want to thank Jonas for his hard work. This is a guy that was a skinny guy and he put on 14 pounds of lean muscle mass while he played for us, which is hard for a guy with his body type. He saved our butts for us last year in the season at times, he played some real good hockey for us. I think it’s time for us as an organization to move on, I think it’s time for him to move on. Winnipeg approached us and said they wanted to sign him as a backup goaltender and would we give them the right to jump the queue in turn for a conditional pick and we took the pick.

On why Gustavsson did not find success in Toronto
It certainly wasn’t for a lack of effort from Jonas’s part. Whether it’s the market, whether it’s the athletic ability, it doesn’t matter. This is a guy that gave us his best and we wish him luck.

On what needs to be done this summer
We still need to do some things. We’ve got to get bigger up front. We’re going to keep trying to build. This is just the first step in the process. It’s an important step. I’m happy with the progress being made. But we still have work to do.

On not getting a goaltender at the draft
We backed off, because from my perspective the prices that are being asked have to be reasonable. If you could get a goaltender that makes you better and it’s going to cost you 15 first-round picks would you do it? No. So somewhere between 15 first-round picks and something that makes sense, we’re not there yet. My comments are I’m not going to overpay to upgrade that position. I’m not happy with what’s being asked and from my perspective rather than strip the organization to fill one positional need, we’ll go with what we have.

We are encouraged by the medical reports from James Reimer. He has a clean bill of health. He’s working out like a mad man. He’s made it very clear to us that he has no intention of giving up the net and that’s changed our thinking a little bit. This is a guy that’s going to come back hard and strong from a year that was marred by injury.

On free agency
It’s not a deep group. What’s happened is in this system is liberalized free agency allowed teams to improve quickly, but in response teams are locking guys up. So it’s not a deep group. There’s some quality there, but it’s not a deep group.

On Jordan Staal being traded to Carolina
Well, we were in on that trade. It’s certainly not tampering to talk about a player that has just moved. We were in on that trade and obviously the price that he fetched was higher than the one that this team was willing pay, so good for both teams. Like I say, it’s June 23rd.

On lacking one key ingredient in the Staal negotiations
We didn’t have a brother named Staal. That was part of the problem. It’s the same thing when we got Scott Niedermayer in Anaheim. We had a brother than Robby. That was a deciding factor and I’m sure it was a deciding factor here.